I am profoundly sad that people are blaming GOG. I'd expect better understanding of how the world works from adults - alas, it seems YA literature causes permanent brain damage. I've seen absurd posts suggesting it would've sufficed for GOG to restrict the game in China, as if it's the matter of the law.

Having been removed from Steam almost two years ago, Devotion is currently not for sale anywhere. It was briefly - for one week - available in Taiwan as a limited physical edition.

Why?

There are many companies which don't do business in China, don't have deals with Epic and such, and have no market share to lose - why hasn't the game found a distributor in any of those in almost two years?

Why can't they sell it from their own website, worldwide except China?

Why didn't some freeze peaches techbro set up a store for them and capitalized on the good publicity?

The reason is that, to sell it, they actually need to get paid.

The messages from "concerned gamers" weren't coming from Winnie or Epic, they were coming from Visa and Mastercard. What GOG would've had to give up for trying to sell Devotion isn't the Chinese market or the Epic deal, it's the existence of the site itself.

And Red Candle still wouldn't have gotten the money.

The sad fact is there's no domestic right to banking services even in countries which pride themselves on being bastions of freedom, not to mention internationally. There's no law, for example, that American banks need to offer banking services to all law-abiding Americans. They kick you off and you're unpersoned, unable to participate in the economy, worse than a felon.

Censorship works because people can't start their own businesses to cover gaps in the market, because they can't get paid. This is where the buck stops. This is who you have to fight, not some Polish nerds in a badly heated office.

Thank you and have a good day.

Almost certainly true.

But you are belittling customers here by calling them brain damaged.

Why should the customer have to care about Visa or Mastercard? I don't use either.

Banking services != Visa/Mastercard.

While those companies have pulled stunts like that (last was PornHub, only a few days ago, more famous WikiLeaks and before that anyone trading in Cuban cigars or Rum), do you have any source that they are involved here?

What would be their stake in whether the game is sold here or not?

There are plenty of blame to go around. Why just call out one?

There's the CCP for being communist authoritarians.
There's the countries for being greedy and caving to authoritarians.
There's the banks for being greedy and caving to authoritarians.
There's the greedy platforms caving to any of the above.
There's the ideological shills caving to authoritarians.
There's the fanboys caving to platform "loyalty".
And last but absolutely not least, there's the apathetic people who enables each and every one of the instances above.

Damn, the pornhub one is news to me. I heard before they were offering to be platforms (intentionally hosting non-pornographic content) for people unfairly demonitized on youtube. This is a hugely sad turn of events.

You forget someone: A developer who made fun of a leader (and in the source files, also his mother) of a totalitarian country with a leader-cult and then made someone else sell it there. They completely burned their own publisher over a silly joke.

Imagine I hid a Mohammed caricature in my game - artistic freedom, right? - and then asked you to publish it in Saudi Arabia...

You do know that Saudi-Arabia/China isn't the world right?
They can decide in their own country if they want the game sold there.
Like Germany does..which you should know.

If that's the case, then all I ask of GOG is to TELL THE DAMN TRUTH. We can handle the truth!

It wasn't me or anyone else here that blamed on the "gamers". They did!

If it isn't "gamers", then say so, damn it!

That's what I find most infuriating about this situation. Come clean, GOG, say what you have to say!

Pornhub wasn't dropped (or only threatened to be dropped?) for hosting porn, but for hosting videos of rape, minors and obviously millions of videos which where obviously uploaded without the consent of everyone depicted in them.

I have some former employers whom not only i hold a grudge against, but i have reason to believe they've endangered the lives of billions of people. How might i hurt them this easily? Oh, wait, it's only when you're particularly small and unimportant. If i was the dev, I'd consider "leaking" this thing's source on the net with the joke re-inserted and file for bankruptcy. Given the situation they're in, are they not in that spot, anyway? Why not go out with a bang?

That said, i understand their hesitation. I'm not expecting them to do it, I just have the mentality that if i'm being tied to a sinking ship in a closet full of harpoons when there's plenty of lift rafts for everyone, i'm going to start popping boats.

You haven't been following the discussion, right?

Try reading and understanding this: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/17/taiwanese-horror-game-pulled-from-sale-again-after-backlash-in-china

Essentially, pissing off China means being excluded from a market with one billion people. As someone pointed out, Chinese is now the most used language on Steam. That's how huge this is. If the prices weren't lower, it would be more lucrative for Steam to sell only in China than in the rest of the world, if they had to choose. And the day when this will be so is not far off.

And for GOG/CD Projekt it's about this market, especially with the CP2077 release.

China is not some rural country living off memories of grandeur any more, it's a high-tech ultra-capitalist (state controlled) country, and the biggest consumer market in the world.

Can I get a trustworthy source for that? Otherwise this seems relatively far-fetched.

The most probable explanation is that the GOG staff actually wanted the game here, but some higher-up (possibly outside of GOG) decided to nix that decision last minute because of the whole "can't lose the Chinese market for CP2077" spiel. The one thing that ticks me off is GOG's really incompetent communication skills though.

You wish. The place is a dump with great PR.

That documentary "China Hustle" is not even the tip of the Iceberg. People should make an effort to go see for themselves (kind of hard now that Xi Jing Poh decided to go back to closing the economy and jailing successful people).

Imagine linking to fake news outlets and thinking they're not full of angled and biased propaganda...

I don't care how much money you can make from China..Would you sell iron to terrorists bent on wiping you out?
Same thing. Principles matter. China is a Communist Authoritarian state. Nobody should be trading with them.